Technology

John Jacob Astor’s Book on Year 2000

John Jacob Astor wrote a book about the year 2000, “A Journey to Other Worlds.” In it he described how technology had saved humanity. Steamboilers powered by the sun provided abundant power. The ocean tides generated electricity. Battery powered airplanes flew through the sky. Astor envisioned a “Terrestrial Axis Straightening Company” whose task was to reposition the globe so that the earth’s climate would be universally spring. He described this period of earth history as “the most wonderful the world has yet seen.” Spaceships were off to colonize Jupiter. John Jacob Astor died on the Titanic.

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The Change in Planting Corn

When the pilgrims settled in the United States, they brought their tools from Europe and learned to grow corn from the Indians. Their technology was limited. They dug a hole in the ground, planted an ear of corn, and added fish for fertilizer. By working hard with his hoe, a colonist could grow the equivalent of four bushels of corn a year, or about one bushel for each month in the growing season. By the time of the Civil War, farmers used mules and developed plows and other tools enabling a man to grow the equivalent of a bushel of corn a week or 16 bushels of corn a year. But today, with advanced technology, petrochemical fertilizer, soil analysis, and four-wheel drive tractors, a farmer can grow the equivalent of a bushel of corn for each 10 minutes of the growing season. American farmers grow more corn than the other farmers of the world because of better technology and better tools. The miracle of life in the seed has not changed; farmers can do nothing to change what God has ordered in the growth cycle. But tools and technology can improve the harvest.

154 Steps to Revitalize Your Sunday School, by Elmer Towns (USA: Scripture Press Publ., 1988), pp. 11-12